Said preparation of the base oil and the preparation of the waxy raffinate product may take place at different locations. Suitably the waxy raffinate product is prepared at the location where the Fischer-Tropsch product is prepared and the lubricating base oil is prepared at a location near the main markets for these products. Generally these locations will be different resulting in that the waxy raffinate products will have to be transported, for example by ship, to the lubricant base oil manufacturing location. This manner of preparing base oils is advantageous because only-one product has to be shipped to the potential base oil and lubricant markets instead of transporting the various base oils grades which may be prepared from the waxy raffinate product.
Prior art base oils as described in for example WO-A-0014179, WO-A-0014183, WO-A-0014187 and WO-A-0014188 comprise at least 95 wt % of non-cyclic isoparaffins. WO-A-0118156 describes a base oil derived from a Fischer-Tropsch product having 10%. Also the base oils as disclosed in applicant's patent applications EP-A-776959 or EP-A-668342 have been found to comprise less than 10 wt % of cyclo-paraffins. Applicants repeated Example 2 and 3 of EP-A-776959 and base oils were obtained, from a waxy Fischer-Tropsch synthesis product, wherein the base oils consisted of respectively about 96 wt % and 93 wt % of iso- and normal paraffins. Applicants further prepared a base oil having a pour point of −21° C. by catalytic dewaxing a Shell MDS Waxy Raffinate (as obtainable from Shell MDS Malaysia Sdn Bhd) using a catalyst comprising synthetic ferrierite and platinum according to the teaching of EP-A-668342 and found that the content of iso- and normal paraffins was about 94 wt %. Thus these prior art base oils derived from a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis product had at least a cyclo-paraffin content of below 10 wt %. Furthermore the base oils as disclosed by the examples of application WO-A-9920720 will not comprise a high cyclo-paraffin content. This because feedstock and preparation used in said examples is very similar to the feedstock and preparation to prepare the above prior art samples based on EP-A-776959 and EP-A-668342.